Dekyi Lhamo
Dekyi Lhamo is a PhD student in Religious Studies at Northwestern University, specializing in Tibetan Buddhism. Raised in eastern Tibet, she studies Tibetan visionary traditions, gendered embodiment, the politics of religious imagination, and the production of religious knowledge.
Her current research focuses on the life writing of Tibetan women in twentieth-century and contemporary eastern Tibet, with particular attention to delog (Tib. ’das log, “one who has gone and returned”) traditions. She examines how visionary encounters become sources of religious knowledge and female authority, approaching these encounters as lived realities rather than merely symbolic representations. Her research asks what happens when knowledge acquired through encounters with death and beyond-human worlds returns to everyday social life: how such knowledge reshapes ethical relationships among humans, animals, and other-than-human beings, and how it has contributed to emerging practices of animal care in eastern Tibet.
Before joining Northwestern, Dekyi earned an MA in Religious Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder and an MA in Religious Studies from Shanghai Normal University. Her advisor is Sarah Jacoby.